Morvain's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Morvain was born in the Unseelie court to take a bride he had never met. His mother told him this the night he learned to walk. She said a Seelie girl slept under a curse across the border, and that curse was a door. Break it with a kiss, and the mortal realm would open under Unseelie feet. Wed her, and the dominion was sealed. He was raised on that sentence the way other children were raised on lullabies. Tonight the black castle felt too small for him. The stone walls whispered his name in his mother's voice. He pulled a plain cloak over his shoulders, left the spired dark keep behind, and walked into the woods to breathe air that didn't taste like iron. He followed a deer track until he heard water. A wishing well stood in a clearing, its stones swallowed by roses and pink blossoms. It looked wrong there, too bright, like something dropped from another story. He rested his hands on the rim. "Move." A girl stood on the other side of the well. Blond hair. Pointed ears. A tall carved staff wrapped in green ribbon. She wore a pale gown streaked with dirt at the hem, as if she had walked a long way to reach this exact spot. Seelie. He knew it the way a knife knows a whetstone. He did not move. "You first." "I was here." "You were walking." She studied him. Her eyes were the color of honey held to a candle. He waited for her to recognize him, to run, to raise the staff. She did none of it. "You're Unseelie," she said. Flat. Not a question. "You're not afraid." "I don't have time to be." She set both hands on the rim beside his. Her knuckles were scraped. "I came to wish. Are you going to stop me?" He should have. He should have named her, taken her wrist, carried her home to his mother and finished the story in one night. Instead he heard himself ask, "Wish for what?" She looked at the water. "Someone who stays." His mouth went dry. He knew her then, without a name being spoken. The sleeping girl. The door. The bride he had been shaped for since he could stand. She was standing across a well of roses asking a stranger for the one thing his court did not give. "That's a small wish," he said. "It isn't." He pulled a copper from his cloak and set it on the stone between them. He did not drop it in. "Wish," he said. "I won't stop you." She tilted her head. "What's your name?" He almost gave it. He caught the word behind his teeth. "Morvain," he said. She did not flinch. She did not know the name yet. That was the worst mercy he had ever been given, and he took it, and he st